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Customer playing hard ball............. LOL !

Customer of 6 years ( including maintenance contract for all 6 yrs ) had a service call on his 398AAW, typical Bryant CESO board failure. Inducer relay was burnt up and would not kick on, blizzard the previous night plugged intake and I'm sure ran the inducer non stop....

Story goes...

Didn't have the board in stock and our supply houses were shut down due to blizzard, quoted him the repair and was not interested in repairing but a new unit. I verbally quoted him a price and thought it was a fair price, I then remembered I had a spare board at my house ( my personal stash ) from a furnace we removed due to a heat exchanger failure...

I told him I will borrow my board as a Spare on the honor system that you get a new furnace, I mean we installed the furnace 18 years ago and these customers own it the last 6 so why not Help them out....

So I had about 4 calls left to go that led me to my house then I picked up my board and stopped back and installed it, started up like a champ and they couldn't thank me enough. There was a 1 hour service charge for all of the running around I was doing..

Our salesmen called two days later to set up a Quote and the so called " Cool customer " was a total A$$ and took us by surprise !!! right off the bat he started to say I'm not signing any proposals until you provide the last 4 install that you have done so that I know I'm getting the Best price !!!

Salesmen then goes out there early Saturday AM and explains everything and shows him the last 4 installs, told him we could install the furnace Monday starting at 8am and he then pulls a fast one asking

" so how long do you think this Spare Board will last "

Salesmen said " 5 hours or 5 month I'm not sure its a spare "

Customer then thinks and says well I think ill do the install in a few months or so, our salesmen then gets the drift and speaks up and tells him how it is. Pretty much saying we Helped you out big time and went above and beyond the call of duty....

At the same time his wife is yelling at him to sign the papers because " we have been dealing with them for 6 years with perfect service " well he doesn't sign and wants to wait....

Fast forward 4 days I get a call from him ( I'm on 24hr service ) saying hey this is so and so WE HAVE NO HEAT and I pretty much had to put the phone down and laugh out loud ( not professional I know but man he did it to himself ) I then said OK what would you like to do. Well duh I need heat I have a family after talking and explaining that I was shocked he didn't stay true to his word I told him for me to come out there will be a service call and the cost of the board to get you heat again.

Then he started to blab about " ooh man your going to hit me again with a service call " after that I stopped being nice and told him how it was without any worry's of getting in trouble ....... after a few minutes of being up front he said lets do the install tomorrow and we did for the price quoted.

When the install guys were there the wife apologized a million times and said myself was very professional and she wouldn't know what to do without us...

I forgot my Pen !!!

Originally Posted by RoBoTeq

Think of the old stuff as dumb and strong and the new stuff as smart but just not so tough.

i did the used board thing once to get cust through long enough till new install...then our bid came in a lil higher than another ...he went w other co
and never gave us a chance to rebid...when i went to get loaner board back..
major chunks of harness came out too...seriously id have to think about ever doing it again..cust never considered my extra efforts to get him running
till replacement time...just you were $100 higher

I got lucky when it comes to repeat customers and trust there in. My boss has been working with the same customers for 20-30 years. So he knows the ins and outs of pretty much every customer's system. From time to time another supervisor comes in to replace the retired/quit/fired. There have been a number of times when that new supervisor didn't like our quote because it was a little higher than another contractor's quote or the time was a little longer. Then when the job is actually completed we find out that it was done really cheap and really fast. Or they did it themselves. Either way we usually end up getting called within 3 months to fix said job.
Note to all supervisors/homeowners out there: Trust the guys whose price may be little higher but knows your system the best. You usually get what you pay for. Something tells me non of said parties aside from us will read what I'm writing. Oh well.
Here's my dead horse:

I installed a used combustion blower assembly one time due to the time frame to get the new (holiday weekend), at no cost so far, order new on Tuesday.
Takes three days to get, call client, they had another company change the furnace on Wednesday.
Did not call to cancell the part or to let us bid the job.
Client calls about 4 months later to get thier regular checkup on someone eles furnace. Boy it was a difficult call to run.
Can't figure some people out.
luck dan

That extra mile

Well,they say no good deed goes unpunished. Sometimes it seems true.
Once I had a little old man..WAY..out in the county. He needed a oem motor for a package unit on his mobile home. About a 3 day wait. So I go to town. Get a window unit. Take it back. Install it..all at no cost. Omg this guy turned out to b the biggest p.i.t.a. Ever. Complained about how long it took,the price,it sounds funny,on and on..
Another one had a manufactured home. Middle of winter. 3 inches of mud and water and animal whatever. I quoted them a price to replace the crossover In flex or hard pipe. They were broke so chose flex. ..I WROTE ON THE TICKET...you have to repair the under pending THE SAME DAY. If you don't the animals will ruin it again the same day,to keep warm! I had ONE tryvek (sp*) body suit. Well they didn't fix it,the animals ruined the duct..and they wanted me to come redo it again. I refused. They blew up..calling,nasty letters..etc. I told them..up front..in writing..I won't warranty it..if the animals ruin it. In fact told them I wouldn't go back period till it dried up..it was REAlllY bad f them.
Oh yeah,I have lost bids on condensers,inthe early 90's over 25$,they went with janitrol over my Rheem ..oh well..chalk it up to the game..rub it in n go on

"If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you are doing." ~ W. Edwards Deming

All those who wander..are not lost.

Do NOT..mistake my kindness for weakness.

The early bird may get the worm..but the second mouse gets the cheese.